While I waited, I fished my cell out of my pocket, scrolling through to find and punch Jake’s name. He wasn’t in my favorites.
Five rings, and then I got his voice mail. Jake kept his thousand-dollar midlife-crisis phone, big as a tablet, clipped onto his pants. He had it in his hand every other minute, voice-to-texting, barking at Siri like she was Miss Teschmacher. No way he’d missed this call by accident.
“You’ve reached Jake Jacoby’s voice mail. Let me know what I can do ya for,” it said, all good-ol’-boy and hearty. It was a message aimed at his own best customers—aging jocks who bought big-ass trucks out of the section I called Penile Compensation. I waited for the beep.
“Call me, JJ. Now. Sooner than now.” I didn’t bother to say who I was. He knew damn well who I was. No one else left on this planet called him JJ. “You owe me this. You know you do.”
I hung up. I’d keep trying until that turd picked up. Meanwhile my Wonder Woman loading screen had appeared. I put in my password. I’d snapped it closed without properly shutting down, and my oh-so-helpful machine reopened every file and put me right back where Lavender had left off. There was my browser, still open to my Facebook page.
The minimized chat box in the corner blinked smugly to itself. Lavender had sent a call, and now there was an answer. I could read his name in the header. His first name was Selcouth. That was about as far away from Mark or Marcus as alphabetically possible, and unpronounceable to boot. I had a handle on the first syllable, I thought, but did the second sound like “cooth” or “cowth” or “coth”? For all I knew, the last letters could be silent, ending his name in a pigeon sound. His last name was Martin, so I hadn’t entirely beervented the M.
I’d decided upstairs that I had to open this chat box, read his answer, travel to his page. It felt like the start of something dangerous. Something that I could not control. I hovered my cursor on the X that would close the window, then shifted it down to the bar that would open the chat box. Back to the X. Calling Jake had been easier.
Well, how does anything begin? I asked myself.
Maybe with something as simple as hello.
A lot could come from that small start, for good or ill: A hello in a bar had led to Digby. Violence said hello to Violet, and then they stopped the world.
But my choice had already been made. I moved my finger down the touchpad and clicked. Open.
10
Rachel came downstairs looking crumpled and puffy-eyed, picking her steps all careful and hesitant, which was bizarre. It was as if my unstoppable, bold stepsister had been Freaky Friday–ed by a shy deer.
It was still early to be up on a Saturday, but she had showered and changed into khaki capris and a flowered top, and she was carrying a couple of magazines. I smiled at her, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. She must be feeling wary of me, in this new era where I was allowed to know when she was hurting. I’d be careful with her, and hopefully the window into her life would widen. Become a door.
Birchie and Wattie were having their coffee in the living room. I wasn’t drinking mine, but I kept smelling it, hoping to huff in a steam-borne wisp of caffeine. Wattie looked as wrung out as I felt, but Birchie had woken up oddly chirpy for a woman who’d been caught hoarding human bones. Maybe because I had canceled the appointment with the estate-sale folks and all talk of moving her to Norfolk had ceased; the county prosecutor had told us through Frank she would “prefer it” if Birchie didn’t leave the state while they conducted an investigation. Birchie and Wattie were getting in a round of pre-breakfast knitting, but only Birchie hummed as she worked, as if the darker reasons for her reprieve had escaped her mind. Perhaps, for the moment, they had.
I was trying to read Watchmen, which I loved, but I was too distracted to enjoy it. I was waiting to hear back from Batman.
When I’d opened the blinking message window, I’d seen that Lav hadn’t sent a plain greeting. She’d picked a hypercute frog emoji, holding up a protest sign that said hello! in curly purple font. Awesome.
It hadn’t bothered him too much, though, because his message back was friendly. Maybe even flirty: Hey you. Sure like seeing your name come up on my screen.
Oh, yeah? I’d typed back, hoping it didn’t read skeptical or suspicious. He hadn’t responded immediately, and I couldn’t sit by my computer until he did. It made me feel like a spotty, lovelorn girl on prom night, waiting by the door in a ruffled dress for a car that wouldn’t come. I also didn’t want to Message him from my private account. If he saw my Leia Birch Briggs page, he was sure to notice, in a few months, that the feed was filling up with pictures of a baby boy with my eyes and his nose. I’d sent him my cell-phone number with another message that said, Then text me sometime. Now my phone was tucked into my back pocket, and I was just as comfortable as I would have been sitting on a bomb.
I’d filled Birchie and Wattie in on Rachel’s situation, and they had said that of course she could stay. We stood as she came down, and even as I did the introductions, Rachel was already apologizing for showing up uninvited on their doorstep.
“I’m having family trouble,” she added in a small and trembly voice.
“We know,” Wattie said. “We are, too, honey.”
Their eyes met, and Rachel nodded. I saw an understanding pass between them, and Wattie stepped forward to give Rachel a spontaneous hug. To my surprise, Rachel melted into it, boneless and grateful, making me wish I’d been bold enough to try. They might have stayed there forever, but the grandfather clock chimed seven-thirty.
“Time to make breakfast. While the biscuits bake, I’m going to start you a pot of marrow broth in the Crock-Pot,” Birchie said, all smiling sympathy.
“That is an excellent idea,” Wattie said, finally letting Rachel go. “I’ll come help, and, you know, I want to get those chicken livers out of the freezer. We can fry them up for supper.”
These were their standard “building-up foods” for when “folks were lowly.” They trundled back to the kitchen to get started. The second they were gone, Rachel wheeled to face me. All traces of the little deer were gone. She pulled my sketchbook out from in between the Vogues, then dropped the magazines onto the side table. She turned the pad to show me my own pencil sketch of Violet. I’d left it on the desk upstairs.
“Are you drawing her again?” She spoke barely above a whisper, but it had an edge.
“Yeah,” I said, surprised. Rachel didn’t usually notice my work lying around, or framed and hung on my wall, or even me doing it right in front of her. She was consistently oblivious, and when I tried to show her panels, she grew palpably bored or dismissive. “I got a contract for a prequel.”
She dropped it onto the coffee table with a wrist flick.